Ancestors

Written by Ricós on 2025-01-10 at 18:22

Beeper is "a universal messaging app that lets you chat with anyone on any chat app, including WhatsApp, iMessage, Telegram and 12 other networks"

It was acquired by Automattic https://blog.beeper.com/2024/04/09/beeper-is-joining-automattic/

Since I don't know that company, I'll #askfedi : Are these people 3 techbros in a trenchcoat? are they alright? will they feed me to an AI or blockchain me to some bullshit?

I'd really, really like to use Whatsapp as little as possible. Thank you

[#]askfediverse #matrix #software

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Written by Owen on 2025-01-10 at 18:26

@enriquericos Automattic is the primary vendor of - and is run by the original author of - the Wordpress blogging platform. The company has been around for 20 years, during which time it has been largely stable and reliable. They also provide ancillary services - Gravatar (a free avatar hosting service), Akismet (a spam-filtering service), and others.

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Written by Owen on 2025-01-10 at 18:27

@enriquericos Within the last few years, Automattic has been on a buying binge. Meanwhile, Matt Mullenweg (Automattic's CEO) has become increasingly unstable, culminating in a very public and very inexplicable feud with WPEngine, a company that also sells Wordpress (as allowed under the product's licensing terms).

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Written by Owen on 2025-01-10 at 18:28

@enriquericos There has been a trend with some of their acquisitions to find ways to make them More Wordpress-Like. Tumblr, for example, was acquired from Yahoo in 2019; in 2024, Tumblr announced that they will be moving their backend to Wordpress (https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/28/24230587/tumblr-move-blogs-wordpress-automattic), a move which has not gone over well with Tumblr's users and customers.

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Written by Owen on 2025-01-10 at 18:28

@enriquericos I have no horse in this race with respect to Beeper; from a distance, I would expect it to continue to operate as it has done for the immediate future, and for the medium future to be less predictable than you'd probably like.

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Written by Ricós on 2025-01-10 at 18:36

@owen I'm still reading links, but damn, this is way more absurd than I thought it was going to be. Thanks a bunch for your summary.

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Toot

Written by Owen on 2025-01-10 at 18:38

@enriquericos Very welcome! It's a really neat bit of internet corporate history because they're one of the few businesses in this area that has been around and relatively stable for such a long time, neither exiting, failing, nor going whole-hog on unlimited growth. Then, in the last few years, that changed!

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Descendants

Written by kit 🌃👶☕ on 2025-01-10 at 18:41

@owen @enriquericos big “and then the fire nation” vibes to the last couple years with them, yeah.

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